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EngageDigital

February 11, 2011

Linden Lab, Why Can't You Walk Like an Egyptian?!

The argument that you should cease trying to fix Second Life and only work on real life is compelling, but SL is a prototyper and generator of options for the online life we all live in many ways -- it is predictive of many aspects of social media. So it is worth trying to fix it when you can.

That Linden Lab would remove the voting feature just when the world's eyes are watching the struggles of the Egyptian people to remove the tyrant Mubarak -- well, it beats all.

What do you think the people in Tahrir Square would think if Mubarak suggested that they move to a "watch" system about his activities, rather than a yes/no in the elections in September? These people would not find that funny.

The arguments that the freakily named Oz and Yoz Linden make in this thread are truly creepy -- theres' not enough democracy, so let's remove it. But they're known quantities of the geek mentality that loathes voting and representative democracy that undermines their tribal powers and rituals. And that's why I'm not going to waste time arguing with people in the comments that fetch up to say it is gamed, it is pointless, it is messy, it is this or that. I will save my breath and try to write more places about this problem and attract more support for keeping the vote.

I've written a personal letter on Facebok to Rod Humble, because the decision came from him: he's in charge now, it's new, and it's something he may have even innovated, perhaps after picking up from the furry open-source Lindens like Soft that they hate votes because it embarrasses them and shows them things the resident population doesn't like -- while they are rigged to only express "yes" and Orwellian happiness, people essentially do achieve a kind of "no" when they *publicize things that are wrong or propose a dissent against Linden policy, like "don't force people to move to Zindra" or "don't allow RedZone to scrape everybody's IP addresses to out their alts" or whatever.

The first thing that should be done is to oppose this -- in letters, tweets, forum posts and inworld demonstrations. Go ahead!

The second thing to do is to plan for alternatives, including even a collective rental of the JIRA software and the creation of a public alternative. Like alternative sims, this is what you have to do to route around Linden Lab.

The third thing to do is to create inworld alternatives, which I will do in some small way but those with lots of sims and scripting power could think of doing this in an effective matter.

I'm putting up a vote right away at the Pharos Lighthouse first on this issue itself, then I might try to go "save" some of the main feature votes of the JIRA and "continue" them. This has its difficulties, especially because there isn't any "yes/no" voting system in SL that I know of that is effective. There are only "polls with 6 answers" which I use -- meaning you have to make up yes/no/don't know/don't care/ etc.

Is anybody interested in working on this with me?

My letter below the fold.

Dear Rod,

As this decision had to have come from you, I have to express my profound sadness about the decision to remove voting from Second Life. You are ending an extremely important social experiment online that was unique of its kind. There aren't any other software projects in the universe where ordinary people can participate.

Second Life is a prototype for real life online as much as it is a simulator for real life, and when you commit Orwellian acts like this you are harming the future.

The idea that you have to remove this feature because it "isn't representative" enough is flawed -- not enough democracy is never a reason to remove all of democracy -- ask the people in Egypt on Tahrir Square!

The idea that it is "gamed" just isn't true -- Lindens themselves voted on it (something I opposed as unfair) and Lindens themselves constantly referenced votes as a reason to do things. Alts weren't used that much; flash mobs weren't the norm. Even with those flaws, it was a measure of opinion. Straw polls are straw; but they are still polls.

It doesn't matter if this vote doesn't directly govern your actions (though it really should in an ideal world). But it's an important marker of user sentiment.

Most important, these votes are user-generated content.In a world prizing UGC, you should never, ever remove it.

Indeed, I have to ask what your plan is for saving a copy/snapshot of the JIRA files with their votes when this is deprecated. Surely you can do that much!

But you really should reverse this decision. You should if anything make it better. If you are unhappy about the discomfort it brings to Linden devs, or the measure of the mismatch between user aspirations and business decisions, then make two separate things -- one a Feature Voting System (there already existed a perfectly good one, that could be fixed up a bit, especially with a "no" vote option and a "merge votes" option, and revived -- it was used for some years before the JIRA) -- and the other a bug tracker without votes (it really is an odd idea to "vote" on a bug, as some bugs, regardless of whether or not they are popular, need fixing -- although I'm for keeping democratic accountability to fix the basic injustice of scrum-type cults.)

Comments

What can one say? It amazes me that people come up with such spurious arguments like 'it was ineffective' or 'they didn't listen anyway'. The solution to that is to improve the system and shall we say the 'rules of engagement' for the Lab, not to scrap it altogether.
That is such an obvious DUHH that I hesitated at first to reply to this.

I'm sure there are many examples of voting on the JIRA actually making a difference. There was an issue starting late November that affected the pirate/navy role play community I'm active in. It was reported on https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-6556

I publicized this issue in various concerned groups and got 52 votes in just a few days. (not friends voting for my issue but actual concerned residents who never heard of the Jira before) I have no doubt it was fixed faster because of voting than if it just waited for the Lindens to triage it. Even so, some people commented and didn't vote or were intimidated just looking at it and didn't vote. The JIRA is too technical for the average SL Resident. JIRA's are meant for feed back by technical types not for average people. We need a better bug reporting system and we need a way to vote on issues and make feature requests.

"The solution to that is to improve the system and shall we say the 'rules of engagement' for the Lab, not to scrap it altogether. That is such an obvious DUHH that I hesitated at first to reply to this."

Nobody but The Lab can change how The Lab operates. It's the same with any company.

Lets say you are unhappy with your Quaker Oats, so you call up and complain to Quaker that their oats aren't to your liking. Do you think they will run off and find better oats for you? No, they will at worst ignore you, or at best send you a coupon for some free oats. The oats you don't like.

When Oz says they have other interests to consider in their decisions, this is doublespeak for saying he has boss that tells him which features the company wants him to do. The company that pays his salary.

The company vote always wins. It's not a democracy, it's a business.

Sadly it's much the same all over. Right now I'm watching my own company make horrible decisions, because the boss wants it that way. Even as an employee, I get no vote to change the course of the ship. I just sit back and enjoy the ride, and hope the looming iceberg doesn't block my sun for a while longer. Welcome to the real world.

What's hilarious to me is that at the very time a lot of the geeks like John Perry Barlow and Rebecca McKinnon are calling for corporate responsibility of large corporations that run the Internet (er, like I've been doing for 6 years), the other die-hards in the global Silicon Valley are still insisting on corporate interests uber alles.

The archaic viewpoint Darien expresses is died-in-the-wool self-interested big IT corporate interest. They never want ANYTHING to restrain an IT company EVER, no rule or law, because they want geeks to be in power and do what they want.

Even (especially) Barlow believes when he does this that *his* favourite corporations will still get to do what they want, but others he doesn't like will not.

I think the era for that sort of old fashioned corporate diktat is long, long over. Companies are on the run now from what their customers say on Twitter and figure out how to go meet them on Twitter and engage them.

And the answer to the silly invocation of product corporations like Quaker -- people don't have sex with their Quaker oats. That is, yeah, maybe some minority of kinky types do. But my point is this: it's just a product that has a very limited use as food so people are not emotional about it. But Second Life is a platform for human relations and people are emotional about it -- and do get to be emotional about it, and do get to demand as much as they wish from it when they find it gets in the way of human relations.

When Darien invokes this RealPolitik of real companies that are all-powerful and hold their employees -- and customers -- in thrall -- and then turns around and demands the same set-up for Linden Lab and us, he is just unconsciously replicating the same power structure that he thinks "has" to be the way of the world.

His only understanding of this is to overthrow the corporate "clowns" and take over himself. He doesn't see any other power structure of separation of powers or checks and balances or VOTING as possible to control this oppression and even end it.

The comment of Seijin Roo is removed here, and he is banned (again) from this blog simply because he's a lying little griefer fuck who was banned from Pharos Lighthouse for very good reason not "no reason": he was accompanying a group of b-tard griefers, known and frequent flyer Woodbury harassers and their alts who were harassing me and my tenants, and he was joining in their harassment while pretending not to. He was doing this under the guise of "discussing" the vote, but he clearly made common cause with them.

Just because he might not physically be the avatar who crashes a sim or releases an obscene texture doesn't mean he is "not actually a griefer". He made common cause to come and harass me, and troll a discussion to make it look like he was merely just some "well-intentioned well-meaning citizen". This is the hallmark of griefers, covering their tracks, bringing in middle-tier operatives like this who may not pull the trigger, but help create the climate of harassment -- trolling to keep demanding the liberals recognize their "innocence" when they are in fact avid supporters of the griefers and the harassment.

How do you know someone is "actually a griefer" when they "haven't done anything"? Well, their constant demand for you not to ban people and their constant taunting is a marker. When people jump from lot to lot and persist on hanging around and belligerently complain that they aren't griefing you and you have no right to ban them blah blah blah -- that's another hallmark. People who are ejected from your land who are normal, and not intent to grief you, usually shrug and move on. They might say "why" but if it REALLY is a mistake, you can usually sort it out quickly -- or they don't care and move on.

It's only people lying and covering their tracks and playing the game of "Not Actually A Griefer" in the Eddie Haskell fashion who keep trolling and keep demanding "justice". Indeed, that's the name of Roo's group.

When he was banned from every parcel in Ross, Seijin then *for the next year or more* has kept harassing me and my tenants over and over and over again literally hundreds of times on his obvious and declared alt, Network Frequency.

Network Frequency is an account that has written on it that it is performing some kind of test or experiment and to contact Seijin Roo.

So what Network Frequency proceeded to do was put prims on hundreds of my parcels, over and over, "just because he can," using the fact that it is an open group and anyone can join it. He would join, lay a prim, and leave, or be expelled, join again.

Parcel after parcel -- hundreds of them! -- would be discovered with Network Frequency prims. Apparently these are some kind of scripted objects -- but they may be only dummies, who knows, they are in the air and invisible and can't be found, they only show on the object list. Banning him does little good, he zooms in on another lot you might have left out, or a little cutout 16 m or whatever it is he needs to do, taking advantage of the fact that Linden Land is a "safe area" from which you can park and lay prims even if banned in one area, if you see a parcel where maybe you weren't banned again.

That someone would imagine they are "not a griefer" when they prim litter on your parcel hundreds of times over -- well, that's the lying and malicious thuggery of Anon and Woodbury all in a nutshell.

I have no idea if Network is scraping data on my rentals -- if the purpose is to show vacancies, there are simpler ways by looking in the search/places list lol. He delights in putting a prim on a vacant lot that maybe gets forgotten, or where neither I nor a tenant happens to notice the prim, until it gets returned months later -- and all that time he is gathering data -- or merely pretending to gather data for the psychological pressure factor.

That someone would find the time to harass and bully someone like me so relentlessly for months on end -- well, that's how they are, these pathetic male geeks (remember Dale Innis? He was like that too here). It's not because they REALLY believe there is some kind of "injustice" when they have been believed to be griefers and are "really good-willed". People who keep persisting in demanding justice and then start actually griefing you were in fact griefing you all along. Normal people without a griefing agenda don't need to do that. They move on.

So Seijin Roo is banned not only from my land, but my blog. Anybody who relentlessly harasses me in such a way causing annoyances to me and my tenants for more than a year with prim littering and apparently data scraping (even though numerous abuse reports against this are ignored by the Lindens) can't expect to be considered "Not A Griefer".

That he can supply the Eddie Haskell defense that it is an open group that anyone can join and set prims, and that "the software is working as intended" (*rolls eyes*) is just part of that lame geek cynical nihilism that we see increasingly in many areas of life, and which is part of a our technologized universe, but which can't last forever.

Why were Seijin Roo and the Woodbury griefers trying to harass me when I set up voting a year ago? Because they hate it when anyone tries to poll or have democratic discussions that they fear "might take power" or "might have an influence". They fight them with fierce insane frenzy because they think they are fighting "for freedom". That no one can take power on one sim or even 100 sims in a world with such diversity never occurs to them, because they'd like to take power *themselves* this way *and do*. That's the thing: they fear democracy because it disrupts their own power-taking.

Seijin Roo says I couldn't possible launch any sort of voting innovation because I'm "tainted" and "discredited" because I "don't allow democracy on my sim". By that he means I don't allow griefing to disrupt polls. I don't allow assholes to keep flying around and harassing and spewing spam and particles and prim-litter, no. People with names like "Prokofyshouldcommitsuicide Engineer" aren't "voters" but "griefers". I don't allow conniving secret-sharers with the griefers who pretend to be "Not A Griefer" to get away by invoking liberal notions like "guilt by association". People who troll and harass and prim-litter for a year are not acting in good faith and never will be. They are vandals against liberal democracy, not something you tolerate along with it.

In that sense, they pose the same problem that communists and fundamental Islamists pose to liberals always guilt-tripped by them -- they wish to exploit liberal values in order to put into power their illiberal regimes.

So, sorry, won't be playing. Set a voting machine on your own sim and do your thing there with your prims and your griefer buddies there. Bye.

Um, they're having sex on a platform made by Linden Lab, and it's an immersive and interactive platform that isn't like a static bite of food that doesn't move or talk back. Difference.

I dunno, a Google engineer led the revolution in Egypt. This is a good and a bad thing in some respects. I didn't notice Google the company telling him to knock it off and shut up.

As for our little furry griefer friend Seijin.Roo or Seijin_Roo, he's trying dozens of variations of his name to keep posting the same complaint about my "lack of democracy" in banning him from my polling area for griefing, and continuing to grief me for a year afterward, so that now I've had to bother deleting and banning a dozen of his various proxy-different IP addresses or spellings.

So at this point as I'm busy, I'll point out that he'll be trying again with some other variation, and I will be deleting it and he'll be trying with *another* variation but will run out eventually or get bored (although not likely, it could be for a year).

Meanwhile, I'll keep a record so that the public can realize they need to ban Seijin Roo and not buy his products.

I don't remove blogposts because they oppose my opinion, as everyone who constantly opposes my opinion knows. I have two rules here:

1. You must have a valid first and last SL or RL or blogger name to post (you don't)

2. You cannot incite or cause damages to me or others in SL or RL.

Seijin Roo bombards my rentals with scripted prims. He has admitted that he is using scripted devices to land prims on my parcels in the air, and now admitted he has done this without even joining the open group. Being able to put prims on other people's land that is on autoreturn without joining the group means you are overriding the intent of the tools and is actionable for abuse reporting.

Even if he was joining the group (he claims he wasn't) that would not be ok because you don't get to keep littering, and he has not done this "just once" but hundreds of times over a long period of more than a year, just to harass me because he thinks he shouldn't get to be banned from my land after taunting me.

People who keep harassing you for that long, including by setting up an automatic script to keep trying to post on your blog with different versions of your name to override the coded spam system are people who have confirmed that they are griefers, not people who are running a righteous cause against someone who is unjust.

No, Amanda. Freedom of speech on the Internet isn't about my house, which is in real life and where none of you are welcome, thank you very much. (I once had a party with lots of people "From the Internet" and my doorman and management has never forgotten it).

No, you *can* come in my "house" here and criticize me. And be rude, evil, malicious, misogynist and stupid.

What you will have to do is use your SL or RL name. And not be so malicious as to actually incite damages.

Damages are making me have to go over hundreds of parcels and pick up your prim litter or erase your post because you are banned from my blog for doing that.

I'm one of those people who executes blog bans on inworld bad behaviour, sort of the opposite of the Linden philosophy.

That was exactly my point Prok. It's your blog and you get to make the rules for participation. Your rules are laudable and allow for an open free debate. LL should moderate their forums on a similar basis but they would likely accept the silly excuses that you do not. (ie "I wasn't griefing, I was just standing next to them, TPed here with them and share all of their groups.")